This lovely doula taught me what it means to be a doula on so many levels. Her kindness, compassion, knowledge and joy are inspiring. I have had the great opportunity to work along side her for countless births and when I was pregnant with my second, I could not image having anyone else as my doula. Her skills as a doula are invaluable to a laboring mother and partner, but her skills as a massage practitioner makes her that much more equipped to help clients relax and find comfort in the labor process.  Jacinda is truly passionate about the mothers of El Dorado, Sacramento, Amador and Placer County having the best support emotional and physically through their pregnancy, labor and postpartum period. If you are looking for a doula, I highly recommend checking out this Placerville area doula!

From the moment I met this momma of soon to be 5, I was blown away. Her strength, dedication and joy was inspiring. She makes homeschooling, motherhood and living a healthy lifestyle look easy. The days leading up to her birth were full of laughs, science lessons, bike rides in the sunshine and snow ( California is having some crazy weather these days), walks, trips to the gym and runs. Yes, I said runs. With all that said, you might understand how I had a feeling that her Placerville homebirth was going to be nothing short of amazing.

A few hours after she joked that "we all knew she wasn't going to have this baby" I got the call 11:40. Being that this was her 5th baby, my stuff had been packed for weeks and my work clothes were ready to go. I arrived to their beautiful home at 11:55. Their sweet little baby girl arrived 14 mins after I arrived. What a beautiful amazing homebirth waterbirth it was!

What a pleasure it was to be able to document this perfectly written story of motherhood. Congratulation to the this perfect family of 7!

​Midwifery services provided by  One Heart Midwifery

You may have see the stories swirling around social media and the internet that lead you to believe that birth photographers don't love or support C-section births. The thing is this is far from the truth for myself and the many birth photographers I know. We love the stories that you write and gladly document them when given the opportunity. Whether you have a cesarean birth, home birth, hospital birth or birth center birth your story deserves to be captured and celebrated. So please know, every birth is beautiful!

 As a good majority of birth photographers scrambled around trying to figure out what to submit to IAPBP's 2017 competition one of our very talented collogues brought something to our eyes. These competitions while they do have awards to be won, something bigger is at work.
​These competition raise the awareness to birth in a new way. Birth is something that needs to be celebrated. The options that birthing women have, need to be known. The beauty and the uniqueness each birth holds, is absolutely amazing on it's own. Then you add the creative eye and passion of a birth photographer and you cant help be stand in awe of what the beginning of life looks like. Every women. Unique. Every labor. Unique. Every baby. Unique. While there will be hundreds of images in this competition, I assure you, EVERY SINGLE IMAGE will have its own story. Take time to see the story written in the furrowed brows, the tears, the bellies, the eyes, the hand and whatever else the image holds.

​I was planning on submitting two images this year one in the details and one in the labor category. The weather around here seemed to have a different idea and our power went out as I was submitting my second image. Competition submission or not, it has a beautiful story to be told.

​What does it say to you?
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